Beto O’Rourke’s web diary inspires derision and hope...

1of2Blanca Sierra, 66, center, and Deyanira Rubio, 60, stop Beto O'Rourke on the street of Juarez to get a photo and urge him to run for president in 2020. The women worked the phone banks for him during his Senate race. They live in Texas and came to Mexico to shop. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Sarah L. VoisinPhoto: Sarah L. Voisin, The Washington Post / The Washington Post

2of2FILE -- Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 19, 2018. More than 30 Democrats are mulling presidential bids, but hardly any of them qualifies as an instant front-runner or a gifted, tested campaigner, and some of the biggest names could pass in the end. (Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times)Photo: SARAH SILBIGER, STF / NYT

WASHINGTON - Beto O’Rourke was on the road again, and the clues to a fledgling presidential campaign were scattered across five states from Texas to Colorado.

Unshaven and traveling alone, he described himself as in a “funk” — recovering from his close election loss to Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, and unnervingly jobless after three terms in Congress.

His high-visibility journey of personal discovery was chronicled in a web diary with O’Rourke transparently splaying his deepest doubts in a state of existential wandering.

It provides a new chapter in the story of an unconventional outsider who some already see as the frontrunner-in-waiting in a crowded Democratic field. That’s in no small part because of the political capital he built up raising $80 million in mostly small-dollar donations and building a national following in his narrow Senate loss in deep red Texas.

It has also exposed him to cutting ridicule. Confusion and self-doubt are not qualities candidates for high office typically herald in public. But supporters note that O’Rourke didn’t come within a whisker of beating Cruz by playing the conventional politician. His brand is authenticity, and his journey into the political wilderness seemed calculated to drive that message home.

Whether or not he decides to run for president in 2020 - a prospect that those close to him give a better than 50-50 chance - O’Rourke is not disappearing from public life.

Cue up a brightly-lit lecture hall at Oklahoma Panhandle State University earlier this month, where the El Paso Democrat talked to a group of 40-50 students and faculty. In a wide-ranging discussion on health care, veterans, “Dreamers,” the southern border, “corporate influence in politics” and the corrupt state of American politics, a young woman asked how she could make a difference.

“I said run for office,” O’Rourke recounted on a much-scrutinized web blog. “Hold town hall meetings. Bring people together, over coffee, over beer, ask your elected reps to show up and be part of the conversation. If they don’t, organize to get their attention,” he said. “But whatever we do, let’s do it together.”

To his loyal followers, that leads inexorably to the conclusion that he is all but an undeclared candidate for the White House.

“It’s exciting to see Beto getting out there and talking to people about their concerns and what they’re looking for in a president and in their country, in an unscripted, genuine way,” said Will Herberich, an East Coast organizer with DraftBeto2020.org, one of two independent groups that have sprung up to raise money and sign up supporters.

O’Rourke’s online chronicle of his cross-country trip elicits comparisons to John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac, writers who searched for the nation’s conscience on the open road. Passing through Tucumcari, New Mexico, he stayed at the Motel Safari, described as a classic Route 66 motel.

“Have been stuck lately,” he wrote on Medium, an online publishing platform. “In and out of a funk. My last day of work was January 2nd. It’s been more than twenty years since I was last not working. Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.”

From the ramparts of the political intelligentsia, it either looked premeditated, or just crazy.

“I think some of his friends ought to look at a temporary commitment,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and DNC chairman, speaking to Politico. Rendell, a veteran of Democratic politics, also saw a strategy at work.

“He’s posting because obviously he wants people to know he’s doing this,” he said. “He wants people to say, ‘Oh my God, that Beto, he’s so unusual, a common man.”

Scoffs, applause, and ‘white male privilege’

The head-scratching already was underway after O’Rourke posted a video of his trip to the dentist on Instagram. There was a close-up of his mouth, tubes running out, as he interviewed a Mexican-American dental hygienist for a series on “People of the Border.”

The performance was panned by freshman Houston U.S. Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, a rising Republican star in Congress. “That doesn’t make you relatable or cool,” he told the conservative Washington Examiner. “It just makes you weird.”

The road trip included no doctor visits. But he did stop at a VA clinic in the Texas panhandle town of Dalhart, where a staff of two and a visiting doctor see veterans from Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico - the five states his trip would cover.

“They seemed well and I got back in the truck, drove on,” O’Rourke recounted, sparking a rumination about a story he had read the night before by contemporary author George Saunders about a veteran who returns to find trouble back home:

“I wasn’t totally sure that I understood what happened at the end of it,” O’Rourke wrote. “Had so many thoughts and questions about it. Not completely spelled out, not neatly defined and tied up.”

The same might have been said about O’Rourke’s excursion, which ended on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As a window into his politics, O’Rourke’s enigmatic journal was received in Washington like an exotic fruit cocktail - and not to everyone’s taste.

Slate called it “Over-the-top, authentic, refreshing;” On Fox News, it was “Epic, rambling.” A spoof @BetosBlog emerged on Twitter, and the National Review’s Rich Lowry asked, “Is Beto Doing OK?”

A more blistering account appeared on CNN.com, where senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson penned a critique titled, “Beto’s excellent adventure drips with white male privilege” - an attack that could sting in the Democratic primaries.

She wasn’t alone in seeing the solo truck ride of a wealthy, 46-year-old man - wife and children left at home - as a luxury few others could afford.

Indeed, Winfrey is next on O’Rourke’s public schedule. The media maven will interview him February 5 at a theater in New York’s Times Square. The encounter has sparked speculation about an announcement, but aides have tamped it down, saying it would not be the right venue to launch a grassroots presidential campaign.

Democrats plow ahead as Beto ruminates

Amid the criticism, there’s little debate that if O’Rourke’s trip out west was a prelude to a White House run, it was an odd start. But that may be the whole idea.

Unlike former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who went through the time-honored process of an exploratory committee and trips to the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire before launching his 2020 White House run, O’Rourke threw out the old election playbook.

Instead, he went to Kansas.

“There are not a lot of political professionals who would say, ‘Yeah, that’s the thing to do. Go do a stream-of-consciousness tour by yourself of the western states,” said Texas Democratic strategist Matt Angle, who heads the Lone Star Project. “But that’s one of the things that makes Beto so interesting, unique and genuine. It’s clear he’s not scripted by anybody, and there’s an appeal to that. How far that gets you in a presidential race, we don’t know.”

While he’s defied conventional expectations, O’Rourke’s instincts have served him well so far.

“It’s a power move,” said Nate Lerner, an Obama 2012 alumnus who has organized another draft Beto group, DraftBeto.org. “It’s saying ‘I don’t need to play your game in order to win. I’m going to do my own thing.”

The spine of O’Rourke’s Senate run also was an epic road trip, much of it in rural parts of Texas where Democrats hadn’t campaigned in a generation. He did much of his own driving, eschewed pollsters and consultants, and wouldn’t take PAC money.

Some Republicans saw that simply as campaign schtick. He never had a real chance against Cruz. But if O’Rourke’s latest trip was a publicity stunt, his backers note that he did it without the press in tow. He also largely stayed off Facebook Live, a mainstay of his Senate campaign.

“Certainly, there could be a campaign component to it,” Lerner said. “But I think in his mind he says ‘OK, if I’m going to run for president, what do I do? Do I form an exploratory committee and go to Iowa and start talking to big donors?’ He says, ‘No, I’m going to go and travel around, see the heartland and reflect upon it.’ It’s uniquely Beto. It’s who he is, and I don’t think there’s any intention behind it.”

But while “Beto” plays the anti-establishment hero, others are jumping into the race to challenge President Donald Trump. A half-dozen other Democratic contenders, including Castro, have already announced, signing up volunteers and political talent with national campaign experience.

‘A lot of people on hold’ for O’Rourke

One question confronting O’Rourke’s advisors is whether the no-frills campaign style of his Senate campaign could work on a national level: The rallies, the road trips, town halls - just “showing up” in the parlance of his political organization - could all that be a substitute for the sort of traditional campaign structure and data analytics that fuel most presidential campaigns?

Then again, his Senate campaign, the largest and most expensive ever, already resembled a national campaign, with money, volunteers and resources pouring in from outside Texas. And now two draft Beto committees, both formed outside Texas, suggest that the enthusiasm has not waned.

In some respects, an O’Rourke campaign is already in the works. Even as he was travelling west, Herberich, one of the DraftBeto2020 organizers, said his group was organizing events in Iowa and New Hampshire, signing up more than 5,000 volunteers from around the nation.

“There is an incredible demand and grassroots energy for him if he decides to get in the race,” Herberich said. “I think people are genuinely excited about the prospect.”

That includes some national strategists who are reportedly holding out on other contenders. “I know three people who’ve been called by all of the so-called front-runner candidates, and they’re all saying, ‘I want to wait and see what Beto does,’” said Garry Mauro, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Texas. “So I think he’s already got a lot of people on hold.”

Intentional or not, political strategists see some virtues to O’Rourke’s wandering approach to 2020. It cements his outsider credentials, keeps him out of the current Washington political fracas, buys time to assess the competition, and still generates national news coverage about his off-beat brand, even if it’s not all positive.

It also sends a strong signal about what an O’Rourke candidacy would look like.

“It’s premeditated from the standpoint that it appears he’s going to intuitively follow his own instincts, follow his own mind and go wherever that leads him,” Angle said. “And so far, it’s kept him in the conversation.”

Insiders say that for O’Rourke, the conversation also includes his family, which includes his wife Amy and their three young children, who just endured a grueling Senate campaign.

But O’Rourke wouldn’t be the first young father to inhabit the White House. His admirers recall Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy. Given the rancorous mood of the nation, some Democrats believe that the stars might be aligned in 2020 for another hopeful, post-partisan message, this one coming out of the wide-open spaces of the American West.

“Every kid in America, when they say the pledge of allegiance in elementary school, wants to be president of the United States,” Mauro said. “Male or female. What you’ve got to consider here is this guy has a real shot at being president. Why shouldn’t he take it?”

Kevin Diaz came to the Houston Chronicle in February 2014 with more than a decade of experience covering Washington. Before that, he was the chief Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he got his start in journalism in 1984 as a night cops reporter. During his tenure in Minneapolis, he won awards for his coverage of gang crime and city hall. He also taught public affairs reporting at the University of Minnesota, where he received his Master’s. After a stint at the Washington (D.C.) City Paper, Kevin went back to the Star Tribune, where he won national awards for articles on globalization and immigration. He also covered the 9/11 terrorist attacks from Washington and New York. Born and raised in Italy, Kevin has reported from Italy, Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba, where he covered Jesse Ventura’s 2002 trade mission. In 2003, he filed daily Iraq War dispatches for McClatchy Newspapers from the U.S. Central Command in Qatar. In 2006, he covered the presidential election standoff in Mexico. He also has covered Washington for the Anchorage Daily News and the Idaho Statesman.